The UK drew up plans to train and equip a 100,000-strong Syrian rebel army to defeat President Bashar al-Assad, BBC Newsnight can reveal. The secret initiative, put forward two years ago, was the brainchild of the then most senior UK military officer, General Sir David Richards. It was considered by the PM and the National Security Council, as well as US officials, but was deemed too risky. The UK government did not respond to a request for comment. Lord Richards, as he is now, believed his proposal could stem the civilian bloodshed in Syria as rebels fought troops loyal to Mr Assad. The idea was considered by David Cameron and Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, and sent to the National Security Council, Whitehall sources said.

It was also put to senior figures in Washington, including General Martin Dempsey, the US's most senior military officer. While it was thought to be too radical at the time, US President Barack Obama said last week he was seeking $500m (£291m) funding to train Syrian rebels - an echo of Lord Richards' plan. Insiders have told BBC Newsnight that Lord Richards, then chief of the defence staff but since retired from the military, warned Downing Street there were only two ways to end the Syrian civil war quickly - to let President Assad win, or to defeat him.

'Extract, equip, train'

With ministers having pledged not to commit British "boots on the ground", his initiative proposed vetting and training a substantial army of moderate Syrian rebels at bases in Turkey and Jordan. Mr Cameron was told the "extract, equip, train" plan would involve an international coalition. It would take a year, but this would buy time for an alternative Syrian government to be formed in exile, the PM was told.

Once the Syrian force was ready, it would march on Damascus, with the cover of fighter jets from the West and Gulf allies. The plan envisaged a "shock and awe" campaign, similar to the one that routed Saddam's military in 2003, but spearheaded by Syrians.

'Chemical weapons'

Though the plan was put to one side at the time, Mr Cameron was later persuaded to consider military action when evidence emerged of chemical weapons use in Syria. However, MPs voted against giving authority for a direct intervention last August. The US and UK accused the Assad government of being behind the attacks, but Damascus blamed rebel groups.

Shulamit
Aloni, a longtime left-wing Israeli minister and Parliament member who
was an early champion of civil liberties, challenger of religious
hegemony and outspoken opponent of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, died Friday at her home in Kfar Shmaryahu, a Tel Aviv suburb. She was 86.

One of her sons, Nimrod, said she had not been seriously ill, “just very old.”

Mrs.
Aloni, an elected lawmaker for 28 years, was the author of six books,
including one of Israel’s earliest texts on civics. She was awarded the
prestigious Israel Prize in 2000 “for her struggle to right injustices
and for raising the standard of equality.”

In
2008, at age 80, she published “Israel: Democracy or Ethnocracy?” a
harsh assessment of her homeland. She wrote on the cover, “The state is
returning to the ghetto, to Orthodox Judaism, and the rule of the
fundamentalist rabbinate is becoming more profound.”

Reuven
Rivlin, a Parliament member from the conservative Likud Party,
described Mrs. Aloni on Friday as “the last politician in her generation
who said what she thought.” But her outspokenness also made for
problems.

Shulamit Aloni, then education minister, talking to students in 1992.David Rubinger/Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images

In
1992, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin rebuked her for questioning the
biblical version of Creation and speaking in the same breath of the
Hebrew matriarch Rachel and the prostitute Rahav. The next year, after
Mrs. Aloni’s challenging of religious political leaders provoked a
coalition crisis, Rabin demoted her from education minister to minister
of communications and science and technology.

After
Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Muslims at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in
1994, she was among the first to call for the expulsion of hundreds of
Jewish settlers from the West Bank city of Hebron. She also said that
high school trips to Holocaust sites were turning Israeli youths into
xenophobes, and she incited outrage by holding official meetings abroad
in nonkosher restaurants.

Former
political allies and opponents alike lauded her on Friday as a
boundary-breaking pioneer for peace, “a moral compass,” “a special
breed,” “an inspiration for all women” and a “pillar of fire.”

“It
was impossible not to admire such a combative woman who fought for what
she believed in and was prepared to pay the price,” said Geula Cohen,
who founded a right-wing faction and frequently faced off with her in
Parliament.

Yossi
Sarid, who in 1996 successfully challenged Mrs. Aloni for leadership of
the far-left Meretz Party, called her “a phenomenon” who feared
“absolutely nothing.”

“How
did we first become acquainted with civil rights? How did we first
discover the occupation?” Mr. Sarid, now a political analyst, asked
rhetorically Friday morning on Israel Radio. “She wanted to change the
national and social agenda, and she did so, on her own, by virtue of her
own capabilities, and attained great and unparalleled achievements.”

Although
some sources say she was 85, her son Nimrod said she was 86 and was
born in December 1927. Born Shulamit Adler in Tel Aviv to Polish
immigrant parents, she fought in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.

She
started her political career with the Labor-Alignment faction, then
helped create the Citizens’ Rights Movement and, later, Meretz. She was
married for 36 years to Reuven Aloni, who died in 1988. She is survived
by their three sons, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Her
death was a reminder of the decline of the left among Jews in Israel.
Labor’s last prime minister was Ehud Barak in 2001, and Labor and Meretz
combined hold 21 of Parliament’s 120 seats today. When Mrs. Aloni left
elected office, they had 56.

“The pillar of fire has been extinguished,” the advocacy group Peace Now lamented in a statement.

Carol Sutherland contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on January 25, 2014, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Shulamit Aloni, 86, Former Israeli Minister.

In 2000, she was awarded the Israel Prize for her lifetime
achievements and contribution to Israeli society, despite protests from
Israel's religious establishment.
In
awarding her the prize, the committee of judges praised her for being a
voice for citizens, for "struggling to repair injustice and hoist the
flag of equality between the different peoples and faiths in Israel."
... "The state is returning to the ghetto, to Orthodox
Judaism, and the rule of the fundamentalist Rabbinate is only growing
stronger."
She
lamented that the "blooming, free and enlightened Israel that prided
itself on research and progress now bows before the rabbis, Haredim and
settlers, who demand everything for themselves in the name of religion."
...

...
She was one of the first to make us aware of the occupation. That untold
region beyond the hills of darkness, in which only a few ever bother to
take an interest. The day will come when the state of occupied
territories and occupying settlers will consume the state of Israel,
which will then cast off the form of democracy and take the shape of
apartheid.
...

Prince Charles attacks food production methods at German symposium

Prince of Wales calls for more local model of food production and distribution following recent public health scares

Press AssociationMonday 27 May 2013

The Prince of Wales launched a wide-ranging attack on current
food production methods he said have led to the horsemeat scandals and
declining public health, particularly in the US.

In a speech at a
conference in Germany on regional food security, he called for the
creation of a more local model of food production and distribution.

Addressing
the Langenburg Forum at Langenburg Castle in the state of
Baden-Württemberg, he said there was not sufficient resilience in the
system.

"It may appear that things are well," he said. "Big global
corporations may appear to be prospering out of operating on a global
monocultural scale, but, as I hope you have seen, if you drill down into
what is actually happening, things are not so healthy.

"Our
present approach is rapidly mining resilience out of our food system and
threatening to leave it ever more vulnerable to the various external
shocks that are becoming more varied, extreme and frequent."

Charles
said the drive to make food cheaper for consumers and to earn companies
bigger profits was sucking real value out of the food production system
– value that was critical to its sustainability.

He said: "I am
talking here about obvious things like the vitality of the soil and
local ecosystems, the quality and availability of fresh water and so on,
but also about less obvious things, like local employment and people's
health. It is, as I fear you know only too well, a complex business.

"The
aggressive search for cheaper food has been described as a 'drive to
the bottom', which I am afraid is taking the farmers with it. They are
being driven into the ground by the prices they are forced to expect for
their produce and this has led to some very worrying shortcuts.

"The
recent horsemeat scandals are surely just one example, revealing a
disturbing situation where even the biggest retailers seem not to know
where their supplies are coming from.

"It has also led to a very
destructive effect on farming. We are losing farmers fast. Young people
do not want to go into such an unrewarding profession.

"In the UK,
I have been warning of this for some time and recently set up
apprenticeship schemes to try to alleviate the problem, but the fact
remains that at the moment the average age of British farmers is 58, and
rising."

Pressure to produce cheap food also created social and economic problems, he said.

"In
the UK, as elsewhere – but particularly, I think, in the US – the
consequences of this are ever more apparent in the deteriorating state
of our public health," Charles said.

"We all know that type 2 diabetes and other obesity-related conditions are rapidly on the increase.

"The
public bill for dealing with these is already massive and I am told it
could become completely unaffordable if we do not see a shift in
emphasis. And, of course, it will be cities that carry the heaviest part
of that burden."

The prince asked if he was alone in wondering
how it was that those who were farming sustainably, for the long term,
by operating in a way that reduced pollution and contamination of the
natural environment to a minimum and maximised the health of soil,
biodiverse ecosystems and humanity, were then penalised.

He said: "They find that their produce is considered too expensive and too 'niche market' to be available to everyone.

"How
is it, then, that systems of farming which do precisely the opposite –
with increasingly dire and damaging effects on both the terrestrial and
marine environments, not to mention long-term human health – are able to
sell their products in mass markets at prices that in no way reflect
the immense and damaging cost to the environment and human health?

"A
cost that then has to be paid for over and over again elsewhere –
chiefly, in all probability, by our unfortunate children and
grandchildren, whose welfare I happen to care about."

The prince
added: "So, as I hope you can see, the success of a globalised system is
being subsidised by many complex, long-term problems that contribute to
a potentially toxic mix, making the food it produces not cheap at all.

"In
fact, it is very expensive. The only reason it appears cheap in the
shops is because the costs either fall somewhere else, or they are being
stored up for the future."

It was necessary for food to be
produced in a more sustainable and eco-friendly manner and for food
systems to be less globally dependent and more locally inter-connected,
he said.

The prince was invited to address the delegates by his
distant relative Philipp, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who helped
organise the event.

BEIRUT: Joining the fight in Syria may be part of Hezbollah’s strategy to defend the resistance, political analysts have told The Daily Star, but the party’s involvement, regardless of the outcome of the conflict there, is likely to alter Sunni-Shiite relations in Lebanon irreversibly. Analyst Qassem Kassir contends Hezbollah has a clear strategic goal, in line with its larger objectives, in joining the fight in Syria. “The fighting in Qusair is not a gamble by Hezbollah. The party considers it is fighting a strategic battle in Qusair to defend the resistance,” Kassir, an expert on Islamist movements, told The Daily Star. “Hezbollah has a strategic vision which says that what is happening in Syria is an international battle for Syria’s position. Hezbollah considers protecting Syria similar to protecting the resistance and the party’s arms supply route,” he continued. “Hezbollah is fighting to foil attempts to take Syria to the American-Israeli axis.” For a fifth consecutive day Thursday, Syrian government troops backed by elite Hezbollah fighters fought rebels in the strategic Syrian town of Qusair just 10 kilometers from the Lebanese border. Thus far, the party’s losses have been heavy, with bodies returning to hometowns in Lebanon’s north, Bekaa Valley and south. Kamel Wazne of the Center for American Strategic Studies believes Hezbollah’s participation in Syria is part of a “calculated gamble.” He contends that the war currently playing out in Syria between Iran and its allies and the U.S.-Israeli axis is one that would eventually have come to Hezbollah in Lebanon. “The war that is taking place in Syria is the war that should be happening in Lebanon,” Wazne said. “They [Hezbollah] took the fight to Syria to battle it out.” But, while in Wazne’s estimate, Hezbollah is “preventing the war from moving to Lebanon,” other analysts say even though widespread civil strife is not imminent on Lebanese soil, lasting repercussions from Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s party’s involvement in Syria will eventually be felt.Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut, agreed that Hezbollah’s actions in Syria have “created a lasting wedge between them and Lebanese Sunnis.” “Irrespective of the outcome of the Syrian conflict, Sunni-Shiite relations in Lebanon will never be the same again,” he said. “Historical wounds have been opened.” Even though sectarian clashes in the northern city of Tripoli had Thursday morning killed 16 since Sunday, Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese Army general and the current director of Beirut-based think tank the Middle East Center for Political Studies and Research, told The Daily Star he does not think the present divisions will develop into a military conflict. “Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria will further fuel sectarian divisions,” Jaber admitted, explaining that “Lebanon is sharply divided between Sunnis who are against the Syrian regime and Shiites who support it.” But, he continued, “I don’t think that this division will escalate into a military conflict.” Jaber and other analysts contend the appetite for larger scale strife in Lebanon is curbed on a number of levels, with both local and international political actors committed to avoiding any large scale escalation at present. Wazne pointed out that “at this moment there is agreement between [Lebanon’s] political parties to keep the security situation under great care,” while Paul Salem of the Carnegie Center, Beirut, said Lebanon’s big international patrons are keen to maintain stability here. Jaber elaborated on this: “There is an international decision to prevent a civil war in Lebanon for now and to keep the status quo as long as the war is raging in neighboring Syria,” he said, adding that Saudi Arabia and Iran, which wield great influence in Lebanon, have no interest in the outbreak of strife in the country. Meanwhile Talal Atrissi, a Lebanese University Lecturer with expertise on Iran and the Middle East explained to The Daily Star: “Saudi Arabia has no interest in seeing the situation in Lebanon spiral out of control or slide into Sunni-Shiite strife. A sectarian strife in Lebanon will affect the kingdom where there is a Shiite population.” “Despite Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian fighting, particularly in Qusair, there are no fears of an outbreak of Sunni-Shiite strife in Lebanon because there is a regional and international decision against destabilizing Lebanon,” Atrissi added. And while analysts generally don’t deem civil war in Lebanon an immediate threat, they do express concern over the repercussions of the outcome of the Syria conflict on Lebanon. Should the Assad regime collapse, Jaber, the retired army general, cautioned that civil war will result in Lebanon and other countries.“If the [Assad] regime falls and the opposition and jihadist groups take control of most of the country, a civil war will erupt in Syria that would lead to the country’s partition,” Jaber said. “The civil war would spread to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. The situation would be out of control.” However, if Assad prevails in Syria, Khashan warned that the “the 21st century might become the golden age of Hezbollah.” “Should Asad’s regime prevail in Syria, Hezbollah’s preponderance in Lebanon will consolidate and it would become virtually impossible to contest it,” Khashan said. “Such a development would place Hezbollah one good step forward toward the installation of an Islamic state in Lebanon.” He added that the party had never disavowed this objective. Meanwhile, Carnegie’s Salem wondered if the only fault line likely to be drawn by this latest Hezbollah action was between Sunnis and Shiites. Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria may also, he speculated, have an impact within the Shiite community in Lebanon, which is now being “asked to fight a different war on a different territory, in a different situation” to that which it traditionally committed to. So far, Salem said, the Shiite community has absorbed Hezbollah’s decision to become involved in Syria, but he questioned how long their tolerance can endure.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on May 24, 2013, on page 3

Not even
a year ago, German intelligence predicted Syrian autocrat Bashar
Assad's regime would soon collapse. Now, the agency instead believes the
rebels are in trouble. Government troops are set to make significant
advances, it predicts.

Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), has fundamentally changed its view of the ongoing civil war in Syria.
SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that the BND now believes the Syrian
military of autocrat Bashar Assad is more stable than it has been in a
long time and is capable of undertaking successful operations against
rebel units at will. BND head Gerhard Schindler informed select
politicians of the agency's new assessment in a secret meeting.

It is a notable about-face. As recently as last summer, Schindler
reported to government officials and parliamentarians that he felt the
Assad regime would collapse early in 2013. He repeated the view in
interviews with the media.

At the time, the BND pointed to the Syrian military's precarious
supply situation and large numbers of desertions that included members
of the officer core. German intelligence spoke of the "end phase of the
regime."

Since then, however, the situation has changed dramatically, the BND
believes. Schindler used graphics and maps to demonstrate that Assad's
troops once again possess effective supply lines to ensure sufficient
quantities of weapons and other materiel. Fuel supplies for tanks and
military aircraft, which had proved troublesome, are once again
available, Schindler reported. The new situation allows Assad's troops
to combat spontaneous rebel attacks and even retake positions that were
previously lost. The BND does not believe that Assad's military is
strong enough to defeat the rebels, but it can do enough to improve its
position in the current stalemate.

Severing Rebel Supply Lines

The assessment appears to be consistent with recent reports from
Syria, where government troops have been able to regain the upper hand
in the region stretching from Damascus to Homs, including coastal areas
near Homs. Furthermore, fighters loyal to Assad have expelled rebel
fighters from several districts on the edge of Damascus and cut off
their supply lines to the south. Currently, the regime is in the process
of severing rebel supply lines to the west.

Meanwhile, the BND believes that rebel forces, which include several
groups of Islamist fighters with ties to al-Qaida, are facing extreme
difficulties. Schindler reported that different rebel groups are
fighting with each other to attain supremacy in individual regions.
Furthermore, regime troops have managed to cut supply lines for weapons
and evacuation routes for wounded fighters. Each new battle weakens the
militias further, the BND chief said.

Should the conflict continue as it has in recent weeks, says
Schindler, government troops could retake the entire southern half of
the country by the end of 2013. That would leave only the north for
insurgent fighters, where Kurdish rebels have tighten control over their
areas.

Lowering Expectations

Schindler's report on the state of the rebel groups allows little room
for hope that serious talks between the insurgents and the Assad regime
will take place soon. The BND says there is no functional chain of
command between opposition leaders abroad and the militias inside of
Syria. The fighters on the ground simply don't recognize the political
leadership, says the BND.

The United Nations is currently doing all it can to encourage both
sides to engage in peace talks in Geneva, though no date has been set. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is once again travelling to the Middle East on Wednesday to plan for such negotiations.

At a meeting of the "Friends of Syria" in the Jordanian capital of Amman, Westerwelle is set to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry
among others. But over the weekend, he sought to lower expectations,
saying that it isn't clear yet whether the Assad regime is even prepared
to engage in talks.

The Syrian army is deploying advanced surface-to-surface missiles aiming at Israel in the aftermath of the alleged Israeli strikes, The Sunday Times reports.

May.19, 2013

Syria
is making preparations to strike Tel Aviv in case Israel launches
another attack on its territory, The Sunday Times reported on Sunday.

The
Syrian army has begun deploying advanced surface-to-surface missiles,
the report said, adding that it has received orders to strike central
Israel in case additional attacks against Syria are carried out.

The
Sunday Times said that the information was obtained by reconnaissance
satellites that were tracking the Syrian forces. According to the
report, Syria was deploying advanced Tishreen missiles which are capable
of carrying a half-ton warhead.